how can you play this game?

[JAGDTIGER]

i thought we would be having fyling cars by now, but instead we have AOE4 that delivers blurry pixelated comic (of doom) graphics, that look inferior to AOE3 from 2007. good job lelic!

[God of Time]

I don't really understand the dislike of "cartoony" graphics, imo. I get its all subjective, but here I go:

Realism is boring, not bad, just boring. And games that chase realistic graphics, while they may look impressive initially, will age poorly and look worse in a matter of years when the next batch of most realistic looking games come out. Meanwhile games/media that take more liberties with their art direction and make more cartoony or fantastical elements don't visually age nearly as quickly or even at all, while also visually setting themselves apart from competitors, making them more memorable.

On the note of AoE4, Its not the most impressive looking game by any means, realistically or stylistically, but i think it looks good still. nothing is ugly(imo), and all the units/buildings can be identified and differentiated visually, which is one of the most important parts of an RTS games visuals, more so than being visually impressive.

more than anything though, a game should have good gameplay, and this game has that. It's an Age of empires game, and we all play them because they're fun to play, not because they look impressive.

[JAGDTIGER]

i get the thought, but the initial thinking behind is probably to increase the lifespan of a game, by not making the graphics age too fast. a good example for me is starcraft 2. in other words: money.
cartoony stuff is usually made for kids.. so its unsuitable too for a game, that is about taking land and killing people. why would you wanna water that down? games about such topics as killing should look harsh, and not something childish.

[FloosWorld]

Цитата допису JAGDTIGER:

i get the thought, but the initial thinking behind is probably to increase the lifespan of a game, by not making the graphics age too fast. a good example for me is starcraft 2. in other words: money.
cartoony stuff is usually made for kids.. so its unsuitable too for a game, that is about taking land and killing people. why would you wanna water that down? games about such topics as killing should look harsh, and not something childish.

"Cartoonish" graphics don't automatically indicate child-friendly stuff. There's a shooter called XIII from 2003 with Cel Shading visuals that deals with a quite mature topic.

[Galahad]

Any competitive strategy game should first of all be visually readable. That's why it has such bright colors, large units and small buildings so that a person can quickly navigate what's happening on the screen.
This is the reason why AoE 3 is not successful. It is impossible to understand which unit counters another unit, they are all the same.

[FloosWorld]

Цитата допису Galahad:

Any competitive strategy game should first of all be visually readable. That's why it has such bright colors, large units and small buildings so that a person can quickly navigate what's happening on the screen.
This is the reason why AoE 3 is not successful. It is impossible to understand which unit counters another unit, they are all the same.

Yup agreed. As much as I love AoE 3 but without a mod like Better Unit Descriptions that compares unique units with their generic equivalent, it's quite hard to make the right units.

[Elmo77x]

The game would look so much better with darker and sharper graphics atleast to properly resemble the medieval era. The cartoonish style has lost alot of buyers

[grraf]

Цитата допису Antpile:

AoE 4's graphics are leagues better than AoE 3 anyway. People see a brighter color palette and suddenly they are computer engineer video game artists that think they know anything at all about graphics. they ignore all the technical ways this game has objectively better graphics. Not subjective. Objective. It just plain does. There are more details, more polygons, more everything.

But they see colors that are a tad bright for their tastes and think, "worse graphics than this old game that had darker colors." No, that's very inaccurate. You may prefer darker colors, but the graphics are much more sophisticated here no matter what you may or may not think.

If it means that much to you, turn the gamma and brightness down, and crank up the saturation on your monitor. There, now you got darker graphics and you can start worrying about the actual gameplay instead of whining about the color palette not being perfectly to your tastes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSts2s4ba4

[Khal'cynee]

i dont play games for graphics
if you cant afford these graphics, grow up or leave and stop whining here